"Mesenchymal Cells and Tissue Regeneration"
-pdf

Abstract: Mesenchymal cells are responsible for providing the connective tissue lineages of the body, but have also recently been shown to be both immuno-privileged and immuno-modulatory and thus they have widespread potential in cell-based therapies. We have been interested in exploring the behavior of mesenchymal cells from their recruitment and migration in the early phases of bone and peri-implant healing, to their expansion from various sources including marrow and umbilical cord tissue.

In bone regeneration for example, engineering strategies comprising the introduction of biomaterials into endosseous environments have provided challenges over a period of many years to the materials science community resulting in a huge variety of prosthetic devices. However, more recently, it has also challenged the dogma of our conventional wisdom concerning both early bone healing and the mechanisms of bone formation. Thus, progress in bone engineering has not only led to the design of novel implant materials, or materials surfaces, but also shed light on some important aspects of basic bone biology which had not, hitherto, been addressed. Of particular interest is the important role played by bone marrow which serves as a rich source of mesenchymal precursors. Such cells are of key importance in many proposed bone tissue engineering strategies yet, until recently, no methods had been described to permit rapid, high yield, expansion of the mesenchymal precursors essential to such therapeutic approaches.

This presentation will chronicle some of the contributions our laboratory has made to further a general understanding of these exciting interfaces between materials science, tissue engineering and cell biology. Specific attention will be given to the role of implant design in peri-implant wound healing; the design of novel scaffolds for bone tissue engineering; the rapid expansion of human mesenchymal cells from both marrow and umbilical cord; and the potential use of the latter in allogeneic cell-based therapies.